The Garden of Eden and Neo-Babylonian Temple Administration

This paper will argue that, in the story of the Garden of Eden, Yhwh is portrayed as a temple administrator, and the man, whom he created, as a temple dependent who is obligated to serve at the behest of the temple administration. To make this argument, I rely on Neo-Babylonian texts from temple archives that disclose the activities of temple administrations as they interacted with lower-level temple personnel. The principal archive for this study is that of the Eanna temple in Uruk. The texts from Eanna’s archive disclose a wide range of activities, including gardening, for the temple dependents (or oblates) who went by the term širku. They also reveal that the highest-ranking temple administrators might threaten underlings for not obeying orders with a variety of penalties, ranging from small fines to death. Portions of the wording in some texts match what we find in the Genesis account. Even Yhwh’s declaration to the man that he will die, should he eat from the Tree of Knowledge, exhibits features characteristic of statements attributed to Eanna’s chief administrators. If, as many scholars have argued, the Garden of Eden symbolizes a temple, these Neo-Babylonian texts help to illuminate the background knowledge that the Genesis author likely assumed on the part of his readers.